“There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change.” William Stafford, The Way It Is(1998).
A Fish Discovers Water Last
A fish swims its whole life surrounded by water, yet it’s the last to recognize it. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? But isn’t this exactly how so many brilliant public sector change-makers and transformation teams operate today? They’re driving change, shaping futures, tackling complex challenges head-on, yet they’re often blind to the transformative power they wield. So deep in the grind, they miss the miracle they’re creating every day. Greatness feels so ordinary when you’re living it, when you’re not fully connected to your purpose.
Nick Craig, in his work on purpose, concludes, after interviewing hundreds of leaders, that gaining clarity of purpose doesn’t just help you lead with more creativity and innovation; it shifts how you see the world. It gives you a lens through which problems look more solvable and opportunities more abundant.¹ Research supports this. A longitudinal study published in Psychological Science found that individuals with a strong sense of purpose lived longer over a 14-year period, even after controlling for other measures of psychological well-being.²
The Purpose You’ve Always Had
In recent years, we have spent hundreds of hours interviewing and talking to change-makers across ministries, public agencies, and transformation units in multiple countries.³ Most of them don’t see themselves as exceptional. They often don’t realize just how unique their contributions are. Many have taken on deeply entrenched problems. But the gravitational pull of bureaucracy, and the resistance that comes with change, is relentless. And so, instead of realizing who they are and what they bring to this world to make it more beautiful and humane, they often find themselves sharing stories of struggle, hoping others can relate.
These transformers are relentless in their pursuit of better outcomes for citizens. They spend enormous energy trying to make public services simpler, fairer, and more humane, or improving their internal systems and processes, making them more effective and efficient, yet some never connect to that sense of purpose that is taking them out of bed everyday. There is a substantial body of research showing that achieving success as a change-maker takes more than grit; it requires connecting with your purpose and leading from it. For example, a large-scale study published in Organization Science, based on approximately 500,000 employee survey responses across U.S. companies, found that organizations characterized by a strong sense of purpose and clarity in the path toward that purpose experience better performance.⁴
To translate this insight into practice, the journals on leading from purpose involve two essential topics:
- Understanding the Why
How to look inward, clarify what drives us, what grounds us, and what makes our contribution unique. It’s about self-awareness, values, and the deeper motivation behind our work.
2. Making-Purpose-Driven Decisions
Purpose is surely an inner compass, but more importantly, it’s a decision-making tool. In those journals, we discuss how purpose can help us prioritize, communicate, and lead more effectively, especially when the stakes are high and the path is unclear.
References
- Craig, N. (2018). Leading from Purpose: Clarity and the Confidence to Act When It Matters Most. Hachette Books.
- Hill, P. L., & Turiano, N. A. (2014). Purpose in life as a predictor of mortality across adulthood. Psychological Science, 25(7), 1482–1486. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614531799
- Snaineh, W. (2020–2025). Interviews conducted with public sector change-makers, ministries, and transformation units as part of the GovCX 4Ds Model research and development work (2020-2022) and its refresh (2024-2025).
- Gartenberg, C., Prat, A., & Serafeim, G. (2019). Corporate Purpose and Financial Performance. Organization Science, 30(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2018.1230